


we need a little christmas (right this very minute)

by shuuuliet



Series: the most wonderful time of the year (merry psychmas) [2]
Category: Psych (TV 2006)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Decorations, Christmas Tree, Gingerbread House Building, Multi, Shawn never stops eating, and she loves him, i just love these four being pals, it's early jules & lassie so he's a little reluctant but he loves her, light shules but it's there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28099461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuuuliet/pseuds/shuuuliet
Summary: When Juliet goes to Lassiter’s apartment to help him run an errand, she finds a startling lack of Christmas decorations. Obviously, it's up to her to get him in the Christmas spirit.Set during mid-to-late season two.Written for "12 Days of Psychmas", Day 2. (Prompt: Decorations)
Relationships: Burton "Gus" Guster & Carlton Lassiter & Juliet O'Hara & Shawn Spencer, Burton "Gus" Guster & Shawn Spencer, Carlton Lassiter & Juliet O'Hara, Juliet O'Hara/Shawn Spencer
Series: the most wonderful time of the year (merry psychmas) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2060061
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19
Collections: 12 Days of Psychmas 2020





	we need a little christmas (right this very minute)

**Author's Note:**

> I planned on this being a few hundred words aaaaand here we are, at over 2000. Such is life. 
> 
> This is set in mid-to-late season two. (Suspend your disbelief about the timeline of Lassie’s divorce.)
> 
> As usual, I don’t own Psych. The title of this piece comes from, obviously, “We Need a Little Christmas”.

“You ready?” Juliet asks as Carlton answers his door.

“Almost,” he says, stepping aside to let her in. “You could’ve just met me at the auto shop, you know, O’Hara. Now you’ll have to follow me there to pick me up after I leave my car.”

She shrugs, wandering into the living room as he goes down the hall to finish getting ready. “I wasn’t doing anything, anyway.”

He grunts in acknowledgment from the other room, then groans. “Hey, there’s a smudge on this shoe! Let me polish that, and then I’ll be ready to go.”

Juliet rolls her eyes. Lassiter is one of the most prompt people she knows, but it figures that it would be something like that to cause him to run behind. As she looks around his living room for a magazine or something to occupy her time (although fat chance she’ll find a periodical that’s not about guns), something catches her eye.

“Carlton, what is this?” she calls to him.

“What is what?”

“ _This_!” she doesn’t even know how to describe what she’s looking at.

Carlton rushes into the room, looking alarmed. “What? Is something in my house?”

“Carlton, what _is_ this?” she motions to the small, sad looking collection of faded brown and green sticks in a pot in front of her.

“What are you talking about, O’Hara? Haven’t you ever seen a Christmas tree?”

“Not one that looks like that,” she sighs. “Except maybe on Charlie Brown, but that one actually _resembled_ a tree. Plus, this is about a foot tall. And it’s half-dead!”

He frowns. “Oh, come on, O’Hara, it’s not that bad.”

“Carlton,” she says pointedly, “that is _not_ a tree.” The more she looks at it, the sadder it makes her. Carlton’s had a rough year, with the separation turning into a nearly finalized divorce and everything, and she hates to think of him spending Christmas day all alone in front of the pathetic, half-dead tree in the pot.

He shrugs. “That’s what my tree always looks like. Besides, it’s not like I tend to be home a lot around the holidays.”

Juliet shakes her head. “Unbelievable.” She pulls her cell phone out of her pocket, turning to leave the living room.

“Hey, where are you going? I thought we were going to take my car to the shop.”

“That can wait,” she says. “Right now, I’m calling Shawn. And then, we are getting you a tree. A _real_ tree. With green needles.”

“Oh, don’t call Spencer,” he whines.

She looks at him mock-sternly, motioning to the tree. “ _This_ is a Christmas emergency. We need him.”

“O’Hara, do you know how much I don’t want Spencer knowing where I live after he kept breaking into my last place?”

She laughs. “As if he doesn’t already.”

Juliet goes into the hallway to call Shawn, ignoring the way her heart speeds up just a little bit as the phone rings. It’s just Shawn, and this is a perfectly reasonable reason to call him, it’s _not_ just an excuse to see him. She pushes away the thought--though she’s going to have to address it at some point--that Shawn stopped being “just Shawn” a while ago, becoming _Shawn_ instead, somewhere along the line, without her consent.

She shakes her head. Maybe she should just hang up, appease her nerves, tell Carlton that he didn’t answer…

But before she can, Shawn picks up, sounding chipper as always. “Jules!”

“Shawn, what are you doing right now?”

“Like, _right now_ right now? Gus and I are about to build a gingerbread model of the castle from _Labyrinth_ but,” he takes a breath, his voice coming back more agitated, “ _he won’t let me sample any_.”

“That’s because you ate one of the towers when my back was turned, Shawn!” Gus cries indignantly in the background.

“Gus, how were we supposed to know if it was poisoned?” Shawn asks.

“We _made_ it!” Gus cries. “If it was poisoned, we would’ve been the ones to do it! Besides, do you think that’s a good method for checking if something is poisoned? Eating it? If it was poisoned, you’d be dead!”

“Yeah, but I’d have saved your life, so you’re welcome!” Shawn calls back.

Juliet tries not to laugh, waiting for Shawn to remember that he’s on the phone. Finally, he returns. “Sorry, Jules, what’s up?”

She smiles. “How portable is the gingerbread project?”

He chuckles. “Compared to what? I’d say, on a scale from a fish tank to a port-a-potty, Jules, it’s about halfway.”

She laughs. “Okay, put Gus on.”

A moment later, Gus’ voice comes through the phone. “Hi, Juliet. _Shawn, keep your hands off of that tower, so help me--._ ”

She laughs. “I’ll make it quick. Gus, since you’re the mastermind of the gingerbread castle, do you think you could transport it somewhere?”

“At this stage, that’s an easier task than getting Shawn to stop eating it,” he says.

“Perfect, let me talk to Shawn again.”

Shawn comes back on the line. “So, where’s the field trip you’re sending us on, Jules?”

“I need you to come to Lassiter’s place,” she says. “It’s downtown, I’ll give you the address.”

Shawn laughs. “Jules, where do you think I got the flour from for Gus’ gingerbread? We’ll be right there. Oh, and hey, tell Lassie he was out of milk last night.”

She frowns. “Did you take that, too?”

“Of course not,” he says. “I drank it there.”

She shakes her head. “Of course you did. Look, how about if you and Gus meet us here in an hour or so?”

“Sure thing,” he says. “Oh, and one more thing. Does Lassie have any mistletoe?”

“Does that seem like something he would keep around?” she asks.

Shawn laughs. “Didn’t say it was for him,” he says, his tone flirty. “‘Bye, Jules.”

She rolls her eyes as she hangs up, but she can feel herself blushing. Shawn is always _saying_ things like that, and as much as she wants to say that it bothers her, the longer she’s known him, the more her initial vexation has turned into intrigue.

She shakes her head. _Not_ the time to think about that.

She heads back into the living room. “Shawn and Gus will be here in an hour, and before you ask, _no_ , I did not tell them where you live, they already knew. So come on, we gotta get a tree before they get here.”

“O’Hara, my tree is perfectly fine!” he says, in one last, vain attempt, which is immediately silenced by the look she gives him.

They get in the car, and she turns on the radio to a Christmas station to firmly set the mood. She smiles when she sees him subconsciously begin tapping his foot.

“Hey, this is your street,” Carlton says, as they drive along.

“Yep,” she answers. “We’ve gotta pick something up real quick, and then we’ll be on our way.”

When they pull up in front of her house, she leaves him in the car, running to grab her Christmas decoration bin from the hall closet. She’s already decorated her place, but with all the decorations she’s accumulated over the years, she has more garland, lights, and ornaments left over than she knows what to do with. It makes her happy to think of them lighting up Carlton’s sterile apartment.

Quickly she grabs the bin, carrying it out to the car and putting it in her trunk.

“What’s all that?” Carlton asks, as she slides back into the car.

“Wait and see,” she says. “Now, we’re getting you that tree.”

At the tree lot, Juliet points out several suitable trees before he finds one he likes, taller than he is and surprisingly full. He gasps and almost protests when he sees the price tag, but she shakes her head at him a little in warning, and he says, with gritted teeth, “okay, I’ll take this one.”

After they’ve paid—Carlton buys the tree, but Juliet insists on buying the stand, along with a fresh wreath for his door—they tie the tree to the top of her car.

“Are you sure you can just lay it on the car like this?” He asks nervously. “Won’t that scratch the paint?”

She laughs. “This is how you transport a tree. Besides, who will even know about the scratches except us?”

He nods, considering. “Fair enough.”

When they arrive back at his apartment, Shawn and Gus are already there, stacking gingerbread decorating ingredients in the kitchen. They run out when she and Lassiter arrive, helping him carry the tree into the house.

Once they’ve got it in the stand, they all stand back in satisfaction. “Now _that_ ,” Juliet says approvingly, “is a tree.”

“I have to admit, O’Hara, it’s not half bad.” Carlton says. “Are we done now?”

She makes a face at him. “We’re just getting started.”

They settle into a rhythm of decorating, Carlton and Gus putting the lights and garland on the tree and around the room while Juliet puts hooks on the ornaments, handing them to Shawn one-by-one for him to hang.

When Gus and Lassiter have finished with the lights and garland, they join the ornament assembly line too, digging through the boxes in her Christmas bin to get the last few.

“O’Hara, why would you put this half-naked fat man on your tree?” Lassiter asks, holding up an ornament of Santa in a bathing suit.

Juliet laughs. “Santa on the beach,” she says, smiling. “A Miami staple.”

He shakes his head, but she notices that he doesn’t put it back in the bin, instead looping a hook through it and dutifully carrying it over to the tree.

She’s still smiling at that when Shawn comes up behind her. “Hey, Jules?” he asks.

She turns, realizing as she does that he’s holding something over her head. Before she can even get a look at it, his lips meet her cheek.

“ _Shawn!_ ” she cries, flustered, feeling the blush rise up in her cheeks. She tries not to look pleased by the affection, but even she knows she’s unsuccessful.

“Them’s the rules, Jules,” Shawn says, backing up so he’s just out of her reach when she tries to grab the mistletoe from him.

She tries to frown at him, but it doesn’t work--she’s still on the edge of laughter, still flustered and, though she doesn’t want to admit it, secretly pleased. She smiles to herself when she sees that the blush in Shawn’s cheeks matches her own, the joyful laughter in his eyes mirroring the joy bubbling up inside her.

When the tree is done, they stand back again, admiring it.

“Hey,” says Gus suddenly. “Where’s Shawn?”

Shawn sticks his head out of the kitchen, his mouth full of something. “You rang?”

“Shawn, I _told you_ not to start eating the castle!” Gus cries.

Laughing, she follows them into the kitchen, Carlton trailing behind, trying to hide the amusement that’s threatening to take over his face.

In the kitchen, they craft the castle together, sans the tower that Shawn ate earlier. Carlton holds the structure steady while she and Gus build. Shawn supervises, mostly, scolded occasionally by Gus for eating the candy for decorating by the handful.

When the structure has been built, they each get to work on different sections. Juliet smiles at Carlton’s concentration as he works on building the walls of the labyrinth out of sugar cubes and Twizzler vines.

When it’s been quiet for a long while, she looks up from the wall of the castle that she’s been working on to see Shawn attempting to build the Worm from the movie out of gumdrops, while Gus works on some intricate detailing with royal icing on one of the towers. Carlton, though, has disappeared. Silently, she gets up to look for him.

She finds Carlton standing in the soft glow of the Christmas lights, looking at his tree, a shy sort of pride on his face. Wordlessly, she joins him, feeling a smile spread across her face as she admires their handiwork.

They’re silent for a moment, taking in the tree, tuning out the sounds of Shawn and Gus, who have begun bickering over a gingerbread man in the kitchen.

“Thanks, O’Hara,” he says finally. “I—I needed this.”

She smiles. “That’s what partners—friends--are for. Merry Christmas, Carlton.”

He nods. “Merry Christmas, O’Hara.”

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve never written a full fic of Lassie & Jules before, so I hope this went okay! I just liked the idea of Jules getting him in the Christmas spirit. As always, would love to hear any thoughts you have. Thanks so much for reading!


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